Join Us on FB

EVENTS

Welcome to Florida, where they hate teh gayz, but are apparently pretty open-minded about furries. The Sunshine State goes out of its way to prevent gays and lesbians from marrying or even adopting (though their adoption ban has been ruled unconstitutional), and yet they just can’t seem to muster up the energy to ban bestiality.

But here’s what I find confusing, even by the standards of wingnut tomfoolery. Aren’t these folks the ones who believe that homosexuality leads to bestiality? Aren’t they the ones telling us that buttsecks and being fabulous is just a gateway drug to boning Fido? I mean, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, and our ol’ buddy Pat seem to think so, and many others in the I’m-Not-Repressing-Anything-No-I-Mean-It Brigade agree. So is it Florida’s position, then, that while The Gay is a threat to the very fabric of our society that must be eradicated at all costs, the presumably-ickier kinks it apparently leads to aren’t really much to be worried about? Wouldn’t it follow that if homosexuality really corrupts society, then bestiality would be a total apocalyptic leghump for the whole planet? But if they’re now saying bestiality is a “rare crime” that it would be a waste of time dealing with legislatively, then aren’t they admitting that Huck and Pat and Rick and those guys are (gasp!) wrong!? But how could they be lying to us? They’re good Christians! Gah! Dealing with these people makes my poor head* throb. I need a cookie.

So Rush Limbaugh woke up yesterday in his palace on Geidi Prime, and while he was being hoisted by his catamites into the gravity-support harness he’d been given by the Baron Harkonnen as a hand-me-down, it occurred to the least drug-benumbed of his brain cells to think, “You know, I’m tired of everyone in the galaxy thinking Pat Robertson is a more evil piece of shit than I am. Let alone the Baron!” So on his radio show that day, he made the awesomely ludicrous suggestion that his Republican God caused the volcano in Iceland to erupt because He was pissed off over Obamacare.

Truly, there is no bottom to the level of rank idiocy defecated across the right-wing airwaves.

Thing is, if Rush was angling to take Pat Robertson’s “Most Evil Piece of Shit in the Galaxy” crown from him (with its lifetime supply of mélange and a little Oxycontin on the side), he lamed out. Because as evil as Pat is, you’ve gotta give the old boy props for backing that evil up with balls so large they exceed most known Kuiper Belt Objects in sheer mass. Over more than half a century, Pat has leveled up his evil to such a degree, he could calmly exploit a disaster that killed a quarter of a million people, informing them as if it were the most natural thing to say that it was all their own fault for making pacts with some imaginary devil.

On the other hand, the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull (I had to copy-paste that, and don’t even challenge me to pronounce it), while it has wrecked everyone’s flight plans and necessitated some serious evacuations, has apparently had a death toll so low I cannot find it recorded anywhere. (Maybe someone else’s Google-fu will be better.) So Rush was careful to pick a disaster where hardly anyone’s died, avoiding the universal condemnation that Pat got, even from Shepard Smith on Fox News. Though if anyone did condemn Rush, he’d just whine about the leftist socialist media ganging up on him again.

So you’re just too lame to be the ultimate in supervillainy you were hoping for, Rush. But don’t worry. You are still a total piece of shit and all decent people hate you. You’re welcome.

We’ve gotten an email at the TV show address alerting us that on today’s 700 Club episode, Pat Robertson has gone into his usual “blame the victims” spiel regarding the Haitian earthquake. Apparently God decided to level Port-au-Prince, kill untold numbers (estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands), and displace at least 3 million people, because in the 19th century the Haitians “made a deal with the devil to free themselves from the French.” Setting aside the native Vodou religion (which is where Pat gets his debbil from), let us remember that the Haitian Revolution is the only successful slave revolt in history, bringing to an end a minority rule by the French that was enforced — in the way slavery is always enforced — with an oppressive caste system and violence. I guess that’s the way Pat prefers things.

Pat has clearly created his God in his image: they’re both despicable douchenozzles. Decent people, on the other hand, are encouraged to help.

Our old buddy Pat has just come out of heart surgery. He’s 79. It happens. He’s making a full recovery. Here’s what the doctors did to save his life.

Robertson, founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network, underwent…a new approach to dealing with atrial fibrillation, called convergence procedure. It involves cauterizing the continually beating heart muscle with heat generated by a radio frequency. It rewires a portion of the heart, in a sense, to correct the irregular beat.

…The technique is less invasive than traditional surgery and more effective long-term than drugs and their many side effects.

In a separate but related procedure, doctors also removed an abnormally enlarged left appendage on Robertson’s heart. They believe the growth contributed to Robertson’s atrial fibrillation.

And here’s who gets the credit.

“Only the prayers of thousands of believing people kept me on this earth,” Robertson said in a statement.

Yeah, I know, typical. Medical science that didn’t exist 20 years ago keeps some old superstitious codger breathing, and he only has thanks for his imaginary friend in the sky and the prayers that presumably winged their way skyward to him. Right. But that isn’t what this post is about. It’s about something else very revealing in Robertson’s statement.

At 79, Pat Robertson, perhaps the leading evangelist in all of American Christendom, is afraid to die.

I mean, think of it. If you really, truly believed in Christianity’s promise of Heaven — a perfect paradise free of woe, strife, pain, fear, sadness, queers and liberals — wouldn’t the prospect of finally getting to go there be the happiest news you could possibly receive? Really, I cannot imagine anything happier. That is, if you really, in your heart of hearts, believed in its existence and in your guarantee of a place there. Not to get into a “No True Christian” discussion here, but it seems to me that, whatever your stripe of Christianity — conservative or liberal, Baptist or Lutheran, Methodist or Presbyterian, Pentacostal or snake-handling wacko — if you genuinely believed in Heaven, then the prospect of death should not only not be fearful, but cause for celebration. A diagnosis of terminal illness should be occasion for a blowout “I’m Goin’ To Heaven” party, a big sendoff to your great reward! All Christian funerals should be like New Orleans funerals, with marching bands and dancing revelers, not tears.

But listen to Pat. He isn’t saying, “Dammit! Here I was, all ready to go to Heaven and be by my Lord’s side for all eternity at last…and you bozos had to go and start praying your little fingers off, and now I’m stuck here! Thanks for nothing.”

No, Pat’s grateful for the medical science prayers that kept him hanging onto this vale of tears just a little bit longer.

Why? Does he really believe in Heaven after all? Really believe, deep down inside…?

Matt Dillahunty has often argued on the show, and I agree, that most Christians, when backed against the wall, are more agnostic than they’re willing to admit. That, in all likelihood, they do not truly believe that which they profess to believe about God and Christianity’s promises. It’s not a new argument. David Hume made it. But it’s moments like these, interesting little moments when a Christian leader of Pat Robertson’s stature reveals in a public statement that death frightens him, that make the point far more effectively and eloquently than we atheists can.

I know many of you have heard of the Kübler-Ross model of the “five stages of grief”: denial, anger, negotiation, despair and acceptance. Look, none of us really wants to die. It’s part of our evolutionary hardwiring, that innate instinct for self-preservation. But when you don’t have the deceptive promises of religion hampering you, as an atheist, you find that you tend to get through these stages rather quickly when contemplating your own mortality. I have not really met any atheists wracked with existential despair over the fact that one day they too shall pass. Not to say there are none, but there are fewer than you’d think for a group of people who are skeptical of an afterlife. This fact often flummoxes Christian apologists, who are often overconfident in thinking that exploiting fear of death will make witnessing to atheists a cakewalk.

The problem with religion is that clinging to a belief in a heavenly afterlife effectively stymies the process at the “bargaining” phase. You spend your entire life in a desperate, daily attempt to please a God, in the hopes that, while he certainly won’t stave off physical death, he will keep you “spiritually” immortal.

I don’t think that the fear of death is necessarily the #1 selling point for religion. But the desire to avoid death, to believe that when you die you don’t, and that you’ll see all your departed loved ones once again on that rainbow bridge, is most assuredly something that religion puts in heavy rotation on its playlist of promises. And for some believers, I guess it can work. Until that moment that death is no longer abstract, but looming.

The nefarious Pat Robertson continues to inhale air and exhale laughing gas. His latest act of saying something outrageous to get headlines and attention is this little gem: he thinks jillions of us are going to be kilt by terrorists this year, and Da Big G gave him the lowdown himself!

“The Lord didn’t say nuclear. But I do believe it will be something like that.”

Robertson said God told him about the impending tragedy during a recent prayer retreat.

God also said, he claims, that major cities and possibly millions of people will be affected by the attack, which should take place sometime after September.

It is, perhaps, the greatest thing in the world for atheists when fundamentalist nutbars go off on one of these “God spoke to me” benders. The creativity value is literally boundless. Sure, I know it isn’t nice to mock the mentally handicapped, but then, this is Pat “God’s sending a tsunami” Robertson we’re on about here. I feel I can bend the rules of common decency just a wee bit. So! Let’s start with the whole thing about how he got this breaking news about our national security from God Himself! The scene fades in on an average, sunny Tuesday morning in the CBN offices…

INT. — PAT ROBERTSON’S OFFICE — DAY

An elderly, avuncular man, PAT ROBERTSON, in an immaculate business suit, sits at a sprawling mahogany desk decorated with family photos. The wall behind him features more photos of himself, posing with politicians and presidents, and a massive portrait of Jesus Christ, autographed, “To Pat, from your pal, J., Xmas — how bout that eggnog! Wooo! XXOO”

The intercom buzzes. Robertson, who has been muttering to himself under his breath, looks up, startled. Wiping a string of drool from his lower lip, he flicks the button with a shaky hand.

I was just thinking a hint would be nice. I mean, the, heh heh, the Orlando thing was a little embarrassing, you know. Not that I’d ever let on…

GOD

Yeah, that one was pretty fuckin’ stupid even for you. Okay, hint. Let’s say… sometime this fall, definitely not September this time, how about after. And, um, big major American cities, millions dead, all that good stuff.

ROBERTSON

Oh, goodness. Oh, dear. But…Lord, wouldn’t it be best to tell, you know, Mr. Bush, the CIA…they could get organized, prevent the attack this time…

GOD

Pat, sweety, you and I both know Bush and his boys couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse. I mean, even you were able to figure out the Iraq war was stupid, which puts it right at the top of the list of stupidest things of all time. And besides, it’s you who is my most trusted spokesman and representative on Earth. You’re the man I trust most with the most solemn duties in My Holy Name. None other has what it takes to do his duty by Me.

A tear falling from one eye, Robertson sits up tall in his chair.

ROBERTSON

I hear and obey, Lord. You are the truth, the way and the light, and in Jesus’ precious name, I promise I will not fail you. I will do what must be done to warn humanity.

The line clicks dead. Robertson clicks his intercom. No sign of the physical frailty he possessed minutes ago is present.

ROBERTSON

Get me the news desk, right away.

CUT TO:INT. — HEAVEN, GOD’S PALACE, REC ROOM — DAY

GOD snaps shut his flip phone and smiles. Camera pulls back to reveal a poker table, around which sit JESUS, LUCIFER, and THE FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER. There is a moment of quiet, then all of them burst out laughing.

LUCIFER

God, you asshole!

GOD

Hey, it’s Pat. You gotta love the guy!

SAINT PETER enters, carrying a case of Heineken and three extra-large Domino’s pizzas.